Keep watching the rest of that video. It's quite awesome to hear Jobs talk about how awesome this brand new "Universal serial bus" development is.

While the parent already commented on this, I'll say this just for information sake. People in South Carolina call USC "Carolina", and people in North Carolina call UNC "Carolina". So when someone talks about "the Carolina game" it really matters what state they're from to know what they're talking about.

It's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to "prove" anything that isn't pure mathematics. You can estimate probabilities to within statistically significant bounds (it's 99.999% possible that you are the father of that child, etc.) Proof, as an abstraction, is much more difficult. To prove that DNA is unique, you would need to sequence every human who ever lived, is currently living, or will ever live. Disproof, by contrast, is much easier. You could disprove that DNA is unique with only 2 people (though it's very unlikely).

Real names make it easy to find people you know on a social network, and to remember the identities of people you connect with on them. Social networks are most valuable for "loose connections" like friends from grade school or non-immediate relatives. You might be interested in their lives, but can't commit the energy or mental capacity to identifying them in the first place or remembering the association function between their pseudonym and their identity.

You or others like you might not care about weak social ties, but (evidently) a vast majority of computer users do.

This is demonstrably false. You can say that pseudonymity has great value. You can say that to you, it has vastly more value than "real names". However, to say that real names offer to value to users, whose goal is to connect primarily with people they know in real life, is either ignorant or defiantly stupid.

It sounds like, to me, you're saying that "The Road Less Traveled" is actually Robert Frost pre-mocking hipsters in 1920. I actually quite like this interpretation.

That's exactly the point, though. They aren't trying to kill item or gold farming. They want to make it (relatively) safe for their players, who will buy items anyway. I would much rather players be able to pay through a Blizzard service than giving their credit card information to some level 1 Witch Doctor name itemsforgoldcom

Intelligent? Perhaps.
Willing to learn new things? Almost certainly.
Interesting to talk to? You've got to be kidding me.

This was actually informative and helpful. Thank you.

CmdrTaco is perfectly allowed to kick me in the nuts when I piss off his very powerful friends, yes. Unsolicited? No. But these guys were begging to be tracked down.

If someone can point me to competing service that is accepted at my preferred retailers, I would gladly switch. Paypal provides a relatively safe mask for my bank account online, which means I trust 1 company to not have a security breach instead of a dozen or more. It's a fantastic service. I don't honestly care about anyone's perceived unforgivable injustices from a private, opt-in, and largely free to use company.

Please source this. I personally know a 30+ year gradeschool principle who makes 90k/year. Are you saying that teachers get payed 4.5k/year? Even 8X seems ridiculous. Teachers are paid at a minimum 45K in New York City and 35k in my suburban district. What public school administrators make $280,000 a year? In my state, the only state employees that make that much are University chairs and football coaches (which is stupid by itself).

https://plus.google.com/settings/exportdata. If you don't have an account, that is where you can download your profile, contacts, circles, pictures, and stream content in open formats for use with any (or no) service.

In reality, they are delivering content that will appeal to a maximum number of users. Very simply , more users want "real name" services than want anonymous services, so companies who want to maximize profits encourage real identity. While sad for users who enjoyed the privacy and anonymity of the old days, the fact that they are in the minority, coupled with Metcalfe's Law, means that their preferred online experience is by definition a niche market, and not worth pursuit by multi-billion dollar companies.

Funniest post I've read in weeks. Thank you.